DAY FIVE, YEAR FIVE, PART TWO: JUNE 4, 1997 – DECEMBER 31, 1997
By Michael Sean McHale
“DINODOGZ DREAMS AND WHAT’S EATING GILBERT….?”
Continued….
The first thing I did when I got the news was call my Aunt Barbara. She was the wonderful woman who adopted my brother Richard when he was a baby and my beautiful mother was given a direct choice…him or me…She only chose me because I was almost 4 at the time and knew my mother. Anyway, I got my Auntie on the phone and told her to tell my brother that OUR mother had just died. I also wanted him at the funeral. Sadly, he did not attend because he literally had just found out who his mother was on that day. (that’s what I was told). The next call was to my closest friends and my ex, Marc W. who offered to buy my ticket for me to fly home to bury my mother. He told me he was happy to use his miles for that. The last call was to my Uncle Danny who was already on his way up from Georgia. He has always been one of the rocks in our family.
When I arrived in my hometown, my bff Joey S. met with me and helped me put together a simple and beautiful flyer for the funeral to hand out (the front of it was in the last entry). My mother and I had talked about her death on many occasions in the past. She told me “Don’t you DARE put me in a coffin or I swear I’ll come back to haunt you!” So she was cremated. Danny and I met with the head of Lynch-Cantillion funeral home to pick out an urn. I saw a gorgeous blue one (in photo) and told him THAT’S the one! The owner smiled nervously…”That’s an urn for a baby. Here’s the adult one.” I looked at the adult version and it was HUGE! She would most certainly come back to haunt me if I continued her ‘largeness’ after her death. I smiled and told the owner, “Well, she’s my baby….we’ll take the baby urn.”
On the day of the funeral, June 9th, 1997 at Wildwood Cemetery, her ashes were to be buried on top of my Great grandmother, Martha Susan Nixon’s grave. The only problem was they had her birthdate WRONG…as 1947! They shaved a year off of my mom! What the hell?! I don’t know why this upset me. She was younger, that’s a good thing. 😊 It got fixed. There were about a hundred or more people there. Many were children all grown up that my mother had been a nanny to over the years. They all came up and told me how much they loved my mother. 😊 I spoke at her gravesite where I actually ‘came out’ to everyone at the same time when I said, “My mother accepted me when I told her I was gay…” (my nana was about to fall out of her chair) “…and she accepted me even more when I found out that I had AIDS…” Aaaaaaand over nana went off the chair. Everyone was happy that I told my truth. My mother gave me the strength to do just that. I had everyone sing the song I wrote for my mom and we ended with Amazing Grace. And then I did as instructed…In the Catholic faith you can’t ‘pay’ a priest for being at a funeral. You’re supposed to ‘drop’ the money in front of them so it touches the sacred ground and THEN they can take it. God, I hope this is true…that’s what I was told. I did it and the wonderful priest happily took it. Btw, he was one of the good ones. 😊
Back in Los Angeles, I had my first event on Saturday, June 14th. A big party in Pasadena. I REALLY REALLY didn’t want to do it but I I did. As I was driving on the 110 weeping, I kept crying out to my mom telling her “I just want to know that you’re happy! I NEED to know that you’re HAPPY!!!!” Suddenly the car next to me got in front of me to exit (I was in the slow lane)…in the back seat of the car was a little boy smiling and waving…I smiled through my tears and then looked down at the license plate….it read “VRYHPPY” OMG!!! VERY HAPPY!!!! I laughed and wept so hard, “Alright alright! I get it! I get it! You’re VERY HAPPY!!!!” From that magical moment on, things go a LITTLE easier…The rest of the year I was most certainly numb and could barely function. Even today, I miss her every day but I know she’s with me all the time. And her ashes???? Oh boy! Since she took the baby urn, there were plenty of ashes to go around. You’ll hear more about moms’ ashes adventures later throughout the years. 😊
A couple of months later, in August of 97, I had a dream…and I KNOW my mother was behind it. I was in a park with a beautiful collie (I love collies)…and I threw a frisbee up in the air and the collie jumped up to grab it and as she did, her head transformed into the head of a T-rex and she CHOMPED on the frisbee! I also heard the word DinoDogz! I woke up immediately and wrote down the name and I also got the first five name, TRISCHNAUZERTOPS! POODLESAURUSREXINA! TERRIERDACTYL! STEGOSPALNIELSAURUS and BRONTOBULLDOGOSAURUS! I was sooo excited! My friend Worthie came that morning to drive me to the dentist (he was using my car at the time) and he was the first person I told about this. The following night I had another dream that had my mother shopping in a HUGE warehouse that had shelves from top to bottom that went on forever. She kept picking up boxes and mumbling, “I really want to give my son something special now that I’m gone.” She finally picked up a box and said “THIS is it!!!! I want to give him THIS!” She turned the box around and it said DINODOGZ! When I awoke from this dream I knew for certain that my mother had brought this idea to me from the other side.
The last thing I will share from this year is that soon after my mother passed away I got a phone call one night. The southern voice said, “Michael, you don’t know me, my name is Darlene Cates (I knew who she was), and I heard about your momma and I just wanted to say I’m so sorry!”
OMG!!! Darlene Cates called ME!!! The beautiful woman who played the mother in the film What’s Eating Gilbert Grape!!! When I first saw that film with my then boyfriend Brian H at the Beverly Center in 1993 I wept. That was MY mother on the big screen! The body, the face, everything about her reminded me of my mother. (btw, that’s why I have not seen the film THE WHALE yet…someday…just not now). Darlene had heard about me and my mom through an acquaintance who gave her my phone number. We talked on the phone that night for almost 3 hours and then….over the next 3 months we talked on the phone for at least 2 to 3 hours a night. I honestly would NOT have made it through that time if not for Darlene. She sent me some sweet gifts in the mail and we stayed in touch over the years. In the beginning she asked me so many question about my mom. She wanted to know everything about her. She then told me “TELL HER STORY!” So I wrote a treatment for a possible movie about my mother’s life called ELLEN SUE. Darlene’s agent took it and shopped it around after calling me and telling me “I don’t know how much of this is true (everything), but I want you to know that I could not stop crying and I had to put it down and come back to it.”
Darlene’s agent shopped it around to Oprah, Lifetime and other places…EVERYONE loved it but they didn’t like the ending because she died…OY! So now, 26 years later, maybe it’s time I wrote a different ending…what happened to ME after her passing. What do you think? Could be the next WHALE. 😊
Thank you for reading. I have 3 events in a row coming up so if I miss a few days don’t worry, 1998 will be coming up soon enough. Happy Easter and Passover and whatever you celebrate on this 04/04/23 day.